More than a week has passed since we returned home, and the next (and last) entry is long overdue. Yakushima’s beauty still vividly present in our minds, we continued our journey towards Okayama. As usual, the Shinkansen proofed itself as the best and most comfortable way of travelling through Japan. That’s how a train ride should feel like! Shinkansen time! In Okayama, we visited the black “Crow” Castle, where – thanks to a Japanese gentleman insisting we should come with him (contrary to other places, this is – mostly – not a dangerous thing to do in Japan) – we…
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Yesterday, it was time to say goodbye to paradise, when we left Yakushima and returned to Kagoshima via ferry. Paradise tried to make the departure easier on us by sending heavy rain and wind our way. On Sunday, we left Hirauchi and took an early bus to Anbo to enjoy some canoeing on Anbo river, which was quite pleasant. We’ve adjusted to life in Japan by now, not freaking out anymore whenever we have to leave our luggage somewhere unattended, and locking our doors becomes more or less optional. We also noticed our tolerance towards bugs and critters has significantly…
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On our way to Shiratani Unsuikyo After a relaxing, but short night at our lovely hostel in Miyanoura, we took an early bus to Shiratani Unsuikyo this morning – the magical forest that was inspiration to Studio Ghibli’s masterpiece Mononoke Hime. We hiked through the forest for 5 hours, and words will fail me to describe the beauty we witnessed. It was incredible. Magical. Little mononoke (spirits) everywhere, rotating their heads, sitting on moss covered branches, with Joe Hisaishi’s The Legend of Ashitaka playing in the background. In my mind, at least. We sat on San’s rock and looked into the…
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Greetings from paradise. It’s name is Yakushima, and it’s a little subtropical island located about 4 hours south of Kyushu by ferry. It’s where Miyazaki Hayao and his fellow animators from wonderful Studio Ghibli went to get inspiration for drawing the magical forests (and it’s creatures) of their masterpiece Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke). And it’s so beautiful here, even without having set foot into the magical forests yet, we’re already suffering from reality detachment syndrome. Big time. Our tiny minds just fail to compute so much beauty. After leaving Hiroshima on the beloved Shinkansen, we spent half a day and…
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Today it’s time to move again, and this time, we’re moving on to the most southern of Japan’s main islands: Kyushu. We will spend one night each in Kumamoto and Kagoshima (if the recently erupted volcano Sakurajima lets us, that is), before leaving civilization behind and discovering the island that was inspiration to Studio Ghibli’s Mononoke Hime: Yakushima. Hiroshima was good to us. After the emotionally devastating experiences in the Peace Memorial Museum, we decided to take it slow and spent the next morning in the hospital. No worries, I just needed to start taking care of my nasty cold,…
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Due to my body suddenly deciding it would be a cool idea to get sick, Kamakura didn’t happen. Instead, Danie (after some convncing it would be fine to leave me on my own) went to a theme park like Onsen and I went straight to bed/futon. That’s how gloriously we passed our last day in Tokyo. In the evening, we went out to a Japanese restaurant with our host, which was very nice and definitely the highlight of my feverish day. The next morning, we finally got to exchange our JR Pass vouchers and took the Shinkansen to Hiroshima. The…
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Several days have passed without writing anything. Sorry. It’s just that, when returning home in the evening, we’re always pretty beat from all the impressions and experiences we made during the day. Tokyo is an incredible city. It’s not huge, it’s endless, as we confirmed yesterday from the observation deck on the 45th floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building. But let’s go back to Monday, when we changed our couchsurfing host and moved closer to the city center (only 20 minutes on foot from Meguro station). Before arriving at our new host’s place in the evening, we spent the…
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It is hot. So very, very hot. Yesterday, we had 37° C, but it felt like 48 (officially confirmed by the authorities). In the morning, we went out to the bay to Tokyo Big Sight, where Comiket takes place twice a year and attracts more than 500.000 visitors each time. And that’s about the amount of people we met. It was crazy. Over the top. Fascinating. Emotional. Awesome. Now, if you have no geekish genes in your body, you might want to skip this part, as you might get bored by reading about Shingeki no Kyojin cosplayers, multiple (and, in…
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A lot has happened since I last had the chance to blog anything, so here’s what happened. Hikone’s mascot Hikone Castle After two incredibly wonderful days in Nara, we went to Hikone where we wanted to visit the famous castle, which was quite impressive. Again, we were more than lucky with our wonderful Couchsurfing host, Emily, who took us to a great little Japanese restaurant where we enjoyed delicious food and mouthwatering homemade yuzushu (liqueur made from yuzu fruits). We tried to give back a little by singing Happy Birthday in German to a Japanese lady very fond of German…
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Today it’s time to say goodbye to Nara. The less than two days we spent here left us with many fond memories. Feeding a deer Yesterday began with delicious crepes made by Hiro, our wonderful couchsurfing host. Afterwards, Danie, Ihsin, and I set off to explore Nara Park where we fed the “wild” deer (only that they’re not really wild, but very much used to being around people and fed and petted by them). I will probably never get the chance to get this close to a free deer, and they are indeed not fenced in, but freely roaming the…